"But let us put his talent aside," he said. "Think of him as an ordinary person in our own rank of life--Mrs. Amberley's guest. Certainly he could not have taken anything here to have made him in the strange state he is in. Surely he must have known that he was not fit to come to a decent house." "I shall give his poems away," Muriel Amberley said with a little shudder. "I can never read them again. And I did love them so! I wish you hadn't asked Mr. Lothian to come here, Father." "There is one consolation," said Mrs. Toftrees in a hard voice; "the man must be realising what he has done. He was not too far gone for that!" A new voice broke into the talk. It came from young Dickson Ingworth who had slid into the seat by Rita Wallace when Lothian went to the piano. He blushed and stammered as he spoke, but there was a fine loyalty in his voice. "It seems rather dreadful, Mrs. Amberley," he said, quite thinking that he was committing literary suicide as he did so. "It is dreadful of course. But Gilbert _is_ such a fine chap when he's--when he's, all right! You can't think! And then, 'Surgit Amari'! Don't let's forget he wrote 'The Loom'--'Delicate Threads! O fairest in life's tissue,'" he quoted from the celebrated verse. Then Rita Wallace spoke. "He is great," she said. "He is manifesting himself in his own way. That is all. To me, at any rate, the meeting with Mr. Lothian has been wonderful." Mrs. Toftrees stared with undisguised dislike of such assertions on the part of a young girl. But Mrs. Amberley, always kind and generous-hearted, had been pleased and touched by Dickson Ingworth's defence of his friend and master. She quite realised what the lad stood to lose by doing it, and what courage on his part it showed. And when Rita Wallace chimed in, Mrs. Amberley dismissed the whole occurrence from her mind as she beamed benevolently at the two young people on the sofa. "Let's forget all about it," she said. "Mrs. Toftrees, help me to make my husband sing. He can only sing one song but he sings it excellently--'In cellar cool'--just the thing for a hot night. Joseph! do as I tell you!" The little group of people rearranged themselves, as Muriel sat down at the piano to accompany her father. "Le metier de poëte laisse a désirer," Toftrees murmured to his wife with a sneer which almost disguised the atrocious accent of his French. CHAPTER III SHAME IN "THE ROARING GALLANT TOWN" --"Is it for this I have given away Mine ancient wisdom and austere control?" "'Très volontiers' repartit le démon. 'Vous aimez les tableaux changeants; je veux vous contenter.'" --_Le Sage._ When the door of the house had closed after him, and with Mr. Amberley's courteous but grave good-night ringing in his ears, Gilbert Lothian walked briskly away across the Square.